William Brown

Inspired by Wim Wenders' Room 666, this collaborative project asks 17 filmmakers about the current state of cinema. Selfie style confessionals explore divides in the contemporary media landscape, and ask whether there is still a place for independent filmmaking.

Dennis, an introverted baker one day discovers a mobile phone containing nothing but a video of a girl seemingly being raped by a gang of youths. When Dennis discovers that the kids are disaffected teenagers staging street crimes and the like to entertain themselves, he is drawn into a world that is far from the quiet existence he normally leads.

A video-essay about the Golden Gate Bridge and its role in film history.

An essay-film that tries to understand the phenomenon of the selfie from within – that is, by taking moving image selfies every day for most of 2014.

It tells the story of Dennis, whose musician brother Oli is missing. Dennis is not the only person looking for him. Oli’s ex-wife, the members of his band and the local moneylenders are all on the lookout for Oli too. And tramps have moved into Oli’s flat. With Oli nowhere to be found, Dennis inherits a whole set of problems that threaten both him and his family… Set against the backdrop of the contemporary economic crisis and the anti-government protests of late 2011, Common Ground is a neonoir film about family, identity, economics and the dream of utopia.

A short experimental essay-film about William Brown’s childhood cat, Clem, as well as a contemplation of blindness, ruins, the self-portrait and Jacques Derrida.

An essay-film about what it means to be in love.

A documentary that asks people at stops on the Circle Line of the London Underground whether they are happy.

A wilfully anti-cinematic and Jedi-themed adaptation of the first part of Don Quixote.

Six characters in search of a zombie apocalypse in France’s Périgord region; a searing insight into the decadent lifestyles of the British upper middle class, Ur follows Will, Dennis, Laura and Rosie, who have come to visit Alex and Edward in Bergerac, France. Edward loves Rosie. Alex seduces Rosie. Alex also seduces Laura. Will is having a nervous breakdown. Dennis is trying to put his life back together. Will then gets bitten when out running - and turns into a zombie. Do the others kill him or keep him?

Loners Alex and Annie, who set out to find Godard, suddenly have a double homicide and a ménage à trois on their conscience. 'En attendant Godard' is a funny tribute to one of the biggest geniuses of film history. 'All you need is a girl and a gun', Godard famously said about making films. With his impressive zero budget debut William Brown both pays tribute to and corrects his master - and subtly underlines what we perhaps already knew from the beginning, that all we really need is a girl and Godard.

In 2006, filmmakers Christian Bouche-Villeneuve and Sandor Krasna allegedly sent the footage taken in this movie to Sir Hamlet Auberjena, who recently sent it on to William Brown, knowing that he is a film lover. Although no one by the name of Christian Bouche-Villeneuve or Sandor Krasna has - to the best of Brown's knowledge - claimed to know anything about the film, Brown will present the film to interested parties. Although the film is presumably unfinished, Brown has decided to follow what appear to be the original filmmakers' intentions and to call the project China: A User's Manual (Films).

A series of video-letters from William to his then-two-year old niece, Ariadne, offering her advice for and thoughts upon the world in which she is rapidly growing up.

A series of epistolary films exchanged over the course of 2017 and 2018 between Macedonian experimental filmmaker Vladimir Najdovski and William Brown.

Drawing on over a dozen films, St Mary Magdalen's Home Movies demonstrates the way in which Magdalen College, Oxford, has repeatedly been used by filmmakers in a strikingly patterned way. St Mary Magdalen's Home Movies demonstrates a new way of looking at how particular locations are treated in cinema – while at the same time using the essay film form itself as a means of providing a ‘queer’ (back) entry both into film studies and, in this particular instance, into a space that is otherwise accessed only by a privileged few.

A wilfully anti-cinematic and Jedi-themed adaptation of the second part of Don Quixote.

An experimental film about actors and acting shot primarily at the Fest Film Festival in Espinho, Portugal, in 2018.

What is the story that is told us by the sculptures of London? An essay-film that asks what story it is that the sculptures of London tell us when they are put side by side in order to show the ideas and values that these monuments embody, and how they give us a sense of London as a city.

Movie scenes featuring cake are arranged into a collage that comments on consumption, capitalism and slavery. What begins as a visually splendid tour-de-force of editing swerves into chaos, corruption and excess. A brilliant juxtaposition of the whimsical and the political.

Ben is a university professor who is struggling with the loss of his wife and child. A match with a student on a dating app leads to possible complications at work, where he is also forced to fight for his job after his grief has led to a downturn in his productivity. Matters are made more complication by the unexpected arrival of his brother-in-law, Dennis, who brings with him Radhika, a homeless woman who has run away from an unhappy marriage. Meanwhile, Latoya tries to balance her studies at Ben’s university with near full-time work, while her sister Dami gets sucked into a world of dealing drugs to students as she tries to realise her ambitions as a musician.

A retelling of the myth of Ariadne and a reworking of Jean Vigo’s classic A propos de Nice as a young woman rediscovers her identity while travelling alone in the south of France.

A collection of 190-second short films created in response to COVID-19, commissioned by filmmakers Usama Alshaibi and Adam Sekuler.